1. Congratulations to Rodrigo Borda and Sergio Miranda, the first same-sex couple to register to marry in Uruguay. Yes, Uruguay. Memo to my representatives in Harrisburg: You’re playing catch-up with Montevideo. The 21st-century just called, it says you’re invited to join.
2. North Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina. North Carolina.
3. If our elected representatives were smart and/or moral, we would be taking advantage of the free money of negative interest rates and investing in a massive lead eradication program. Lead poisons our future, with exposure “linked to lower IQs, learning disabilities and even criminal behavior” (see Kevin Drum’s compelling case for a link between lead exposure and violent crime).
The Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control is one of the best investments of any tax dollar — yielding anywhere from $17 to $221 “in health benefits, increased IQ, higher lifetime earnings, tax revenue, reduced spending on special education, and reduced criminal activity.” We could be tripling its budget and tripling those benefits.
But, because our Congress is neither smart nor moral, it’s trying to do the opposite: “The House Appropriations Committee recently approved legislation to cut lead removal programs by more than half.”
This is fiscally stupid and needlessly cruel. It’s just as starkly evil as any more direct form of child abuse.
4. Tony Jones looks at the meaning of “heresy” from the standpoint of official church councils. “In its purest sense,” Tony writes, “heresy only regards issues that were explicitly dealt with in the Seven Ecumenical Councils.”
True enough, but I prefer an older definition. Ignatius of Antioch said that heretics were those who “have no care for love, none for the widow, none for the orphan, none for the afflicted, none for the prisoner, none for the hungry or thirsty.”
5. New for the 1 percent: a line of lingerie made of pure gold:
Pieces from Rococo Dessous range in price from $1,550 to $6,000. They’re made with gold thread from Switzerland, which is fine enough that garments woven from it are “surprising[ly] soft and durable,” the line’s designer told CNBC.
Reminds me of another remark from one of the luminaries of the early church. This is from Basil of Caesarea:
What is a miser? One who is not content with what is needful. What is a thief? One who takes what belongs to others. Why do you not consider yourself a miser and a thief when you claim as your own what you received in trust? If one who takes the clothing off another is called a thief, why give any other name to one who can clothe the naked and refuses to do so? The bread that you withhold belongs to the poor; the cape that you hide in your chest belongs to the naked; the shoes rotting in your house belong to those who must go unshod.
6. Here are a couple of surprising quotes:
- “When you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small, but he’s going to ask you what you did for the poor. You’d better have a good answer.”
- “It’s pro-life, it’s saving lives, it is creating jobs, it is saving hospitals.”
Those are both from Republican governors — John Kasich of Ohio and Jan Brewer of Arizona — and they’re both defending Obamacare.
7. This KRON San Francisco local news report from 1981 looks at an early version of online newspapers. It’s a good report — correctly predicting many of the very trends that would lead, 20 years later, to my getting a job as an online copy editor (the same trends that would lead, 10 years after that, to my getting laid off).
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